Public Domain

Works end up in the Public Domain either because the author has chosen to place them in it, or because the term for which the particular work is copyrighted has ended. (See section 6 of the Canadian Copyright Act). Unlike Creative Commons or Copyleft licensing, when someone chooses to place their work in the Public Domain, they relinquish all legal rights to that work, within the constraints of the law in their jurisdiction. This includes the right to be credited for the work (although there may still be a moral or professional obligation to credit the original creator). Content creators who wish to donate their work to the Public Domain may choose to attach a licence that looks like this:


Alternatively, if someone uses work from the Public Domain, and wants to label it as such, they may choose a Public Domain Mark (PDM). A PDM allows viewers to go back to the original work for more information if desired. A PDM may look like this:

A PDM labelling tool, which provides html code to attach to a digital document, can be found at :
http://creativecommons.org/choose/mark/details?lang=en_US

Once a work enters the Public Domain, it remains there. However, any variation or remixing of a public domain work becomes the property of the person making the variation, and it receives automatic copyright, just as do completely original works.

More information about the Public Domain can be found at:

http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0

An American interpretation of Public Domain law:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter8/index.html

There are several on-line sources of Public Domain works, including:

Recorded books available through http://librivox.org/public-domain/
Royalty-free music can be found at http://www.pdinfo.com/
The Internet Archive indexes content in the Public Domain.